I’ll be speaking about the rival regional cultures of North America described in American Nations — and how we overcome the resulting problems for U.S. nationhood — at Kenyon College’s Center for the Study of American Democracy on October 17th. The event is free and kicks off at 7:30pm in Kenyon’s Community Foundation Theater. If you live in that part of Ohio, come on by and say hello.
Also, if you’re a Kenyon student or faculty member, I’m speaking more informally with those interested in journalism and writing — and history research too — at CSAD at noon that day. Details here.
My next public lecture is on South Carolinian intellectuals and the struggle to forge the story of United States nationhood, at, appropriately enough, the University of South Carolina, Oct. 26. It’s a topic I researched for my most recent book, Union, which was, in effect, a biography of William Gilmore Simms, Woodrow Wilson (South Carolinians both), George Bancroft, Frederick Douglass, and Frederick Jackson Turner who engaged in a two-generation-long battle over whether we would be a civic or ethnic nation.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.